Saturday, August 7, 2010

Article marketing is one of those topics that always seems togenerate a lot of conversation in forums and marketingdiscussions... Online marketers are generally split into threecamps, when it comes to arguing the effectiveness of articlemarketing as a promotional method...

Camp One swears by article marketing, as an integral andessential part of their online marketing activities... Theysuggest that the benefits of article marketing are twofold:direct click-through (CTR) traffic from the article that maydeliver immediate sales; and improved search rankings that willdrive additional search traffic...

Camp Two insists that the only real value of article marketing isfor building links and creating link popularity for a website,enabling the website to rank well in Google and other searchengines...

Camp Three accuses the first two camps of telling stories andselling a sham...

I am in the first camp... I have made a lot of money online, inthe last 10 years, because I use article marketing to promote ALLof my websites...

Some people insist that I have only made money online, because Isell article marketing services... But, the truth is that I havemade a lot of money in a variety of niches that are "notrelated" to online marketing... And, I have made that money inthose niches, because I have used article marketing as theprimary promotion method for all of my niche websites too...

Measuring The Success Of An Article Marketing Campaign

Those folks in Camp Two measure the success of their articlemarketing campaigns by the number of back links and Google pageone search results that they can achieve...

Those of us, who are in camp One, measure our success by thedollar value of the sales that an individual article can deliverto our businesses... We count our search engine traffic to beonly a BONUS benefit of article marketing...

There are four reasons why Camp One should make more sense...

1. Direct click-through traffic from articles is often frompeople who are pre-qualified to purchase what we are selling...In turn, this ensures a better conversion-rate on the trafficthat we do receive directly from an article...

2. While search engine traffic is good, the people finding ourwebsites in the search engines are not always as stronglytargeted, nor pre-qualified to purchase what we are selling...

3. There can only be 10 websites on page one of Google and theother search engines... Depending on how competitive a niche maybe, it could take weeks or years to reach page one of Google foryour targeted keywords... It could take a single article, withits links to your website, or it could take 500 articles to getyour website to page one...

4. If you can get direct click-through traffic to your websites,from your articles, you stand a good chance of generating salesat your website -- NOW, instead of later...

In Camp One, we utilize article marketing to generate actualsales, rather than search engine rankings...

We understand that "a bird in hand is more valuable than two inthe bush", and in other words, "a dollar in hand is morevaluable than a page-one listing in Google..."

The beauty of putting sales ahead of search engine rankings isthat we can make money today, rather than to have to pray forgood search engine rankings, so that we might be able to makemoney tomorrow...

Where Do You Want Your Articles To Take You?

The success that you will achieve with your articles will bedetermined before you put your very first word into your favoriteword processing software...

What are you trying to achieve with your articles?

This is very important, because your goals will determine youroutcome...

Article marketers in Camp One seek to write articles that willappeal to their target audience... Every word that they put intoan article is designed to appeal to its human audience...

Article marketers in Camp Two are only interested in getting backlinks...

It really is that simple...

Are you writing your articles for a human audience, or are youwriting your articles for the search engines?

If you are only concerned with getting the back link, then thatis all you will receive...

However, if you are concerned with getting the attention of thepeople most likely to buy your products and services, then thatis what you will more likely receive, and you may even discoverthat you are getting attention from the search engines as well...

In other words, the articles of yours that are published onthird-party websites that will send real link popularity to yourwebsite are those articles that other people have deemed valuableenough to link from their own websites...

People do not link to junk, unless they are paid to do so...

If people do not link to your articles on third-party websites,you should not be surprised if Google and the other searchengines do not value the links that you have pointing to yourwebsite from your articles...

So, if you want your articles to pass real link popularity toyour website, then you need to write your articles in such a waythat other people will find value in them and want to link tothem...

This is the primary reason why so many people fail with articlemarketing... They write crap, then get mad when they get crapresults...

People who leave Camp One for Camp Two, then leap to Camp Threeare people who have never attempted to follow any of the articlemarketing principles, described in this article...

Opening The Door To Article Marketing Success

There are many online publishers who will share your targetaudience with you...

When your articles focus on the wants and needs of people in yourtarget audience, it will also appeal to the publisher who has anaudience you want to reach...

There are five essential steps to creating articles that willproduce good results for your business...

Step One: Write an article that people in your target audiencewill want to read...

Step Two: Make sure that your article carries a title that willget your article opened... No matter how good your article is,publishers and readers make the decision to read your article, inless than 10 seconds, using your article title to determine ifyour article might be worth the time they will sacrifice to readit...

Step Three: Make sure that the article is good enough to keep theattention of your reader to its conclusion, so they will see yourAuthors' Resource Box at the end of the article...

Step Four: Construct your Authors' Resource Box with the goal ofgetting the reader to your website, where you can make acomprehensive case for your offer...

There is an art and a science to developing articles that willproduce the desired results for your business...

The science is understanding what is required to make yourarticles attractive to readers and publishers...

The art of article marketing is being able to put an articletogether in such a way that people actually want to read it andare thankful for having read it...

Final Thoughts...

It may be easier to write articles only for the search engines...Impressing the search engines can be as easy as impressing mythree-year-old... "I'm gonna eat your ear..."

But if you are willing to invest a few more minutes to make sureyour article will appeal to publishers and readers too, you mightjust find that article marketing has a value beyond the searchengines... And in my book, that spells M-o-r-e R-e-v-e-n-u-e...

p.s. If you liked this article, please give it value by linkingto it...

---------------------------------------------------------------------We do not utilize a cookie-cutter approach for our articledistribution service. Instead, we strive to deliver the articleswe distribute directly to the publishers who are most likely topublish them... Let us distribute your good-quality articles toour publishers, who already have access to the audiences you wantto reach... Get started today at: http://thePhantomWriters.com/Written by Bill Platt. Also get his free article marketing ebook:http://thePhantomWriters.com/ebooks/advanced-article-marketing.html